I’ve been using SmartWare to backup the HDD (750 GB) on my desktop running Win7. The HDD on my desktop crashed (unable to see the drive). I replaced it with a SSD for most of Win7, and another HDD for My Pictures and My Videos. I did a SmartWare Retrieve and all of the folders/files appeared on the appropriate drives. However, I get access denied when trying to open any of the files when running as user with admin privileges. If I login as Administrator, then I can open any of the files.
This looks like an ownership/permissions problem. Sure enough, when I look at properties on a file, there are two "Account Unknown (S-1-5-21- plus 34 more numbers!!) and no user accounts, just the Administrator account. I was able to ‘fix’ Myphotos and Myvideos by copy and pasting them into the correct foilders. However, MyDocuments, Favorites, etc don’t respond to that trick.
I am not an experienced IT support person and don’t really know the details of Windows file security but I’m being forced into it because I really need this backup. I’ve viewed other posts on this issue and have figured out I’m on my own here. Once I get the system running (this will be very time consuming) you can bet that I’m going with another backup solution.
kblackw,
If permissions were unfortunately affected or modified, then perhaps changing inherited ownership permissions may result in a positive outcome. For additional details, please visit the following link:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1076/
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Thanks JSTAFF,
Article ID 1076 was the first part of a solution in my situaton. I was able to add MyUser to the list of owners in the MyUser folder and checked the box to ‘Replace owner on subcontainers and objects’. This folder is 160 GB so it took a bit of time. However, when I went to open a file, I still got the ‘access denied’ error. I also noted that the file properties still contained the ‘unknown owner’ and the check marks for file permissions on all owners are greyed out.
So I went back into to MyUser folder and this time changed all of the permissions to FullControl and checked boxes for “Include inheritable…” and “replace child properites…”. After applying this it then again went through 160 GB and changed the permissions. No more ‘Access denied’ and the two ‘unkown owner’ listings are gone.
I’ve done several hours of testing and it looks OK but I now have to reload all my applications. I’ll repost if I run into anything else.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m going forward with a different (and hopefully) more robust Backup solution. This process was far too expensive in terms of time invested and required a level of undrstanding of Win7 File Systems much more than I bargained for. The one bright spot was that SmartWare did save all of my files up to the day the disk crashed. Thanks again to J STAFF for getting me started on the right path to a solution.
